Background The idea of a bloc led by
Sergei Glazyev, Advisor to General
Alexander Lebed, a member of the
CPRF faction, began to be widely discussed in the spring of 2003. One of the proposed names was "Comrade" (), the same name given to the news agency created to support the bloc. Three main options for the bloc's composition and ideological direction were speculated upon: a "civilized left" bloc (led by Glazyev and
Oleg Shein); a broad "communist-patriotic" bloc (led by
Valentin Varennikov,
Igor Rodionov,
Sergei Baburin, Sergei Glazyev); and a "left-patriotic" non-communist bloc (led by
Dmitry Rogozin,
Viktor Gerashchenko,
Alexei Podberezkin and
Yuri Skokov). The final version of the bloc was closer to the third option.
Formation On 23 August 2003, during the "Elections 2003" forum organized by the
Central Election Commission, an Agreement on Joint Activities of People's Patriotic Forces was signed, formalizing a coalition that became the basis of the bloc led by Glazyev. Glazyev himself was the first signatory of the agreement as both chairman of the
Congress of Russian Communities and co-chairman of the
Party of Russian Regions. The agreement was also signed by the
Russian Party of Labor, the
Union of People for Education and Science, the
Eurasia Party, the
For a Holy Russia party, the Russian Traditionalist Party, the Social Liberal Union of the Russian Federation, the People's Patriotic Union of Youth, the Sotsprof trade union, and others. The People's Patriotic Union "Rodina" bloc was formally established at a congress on 14 September 2003, by three parties: the
Party of Russian Regions, the
Party of National Revival "People's Will" and the
Socialist United Party of Russia "Spiritual Heritage". Other parties and organizations that had signed the agreement a month earlier joined the bloc informally. During the congress, it was announced that for the
2003 legislative election, representatives of 13 parties would be included on the bloc's federal electoral list, while representatives of 28 coalition parties and movements would be nominated in single-mandate constituencies with the bloc's support. The composition of the federal electoral list was also announced, and the Supreme Council, the bloc's governing body for the election campaign and the term of the
4th State Duma, was established. During the election campaign, Rodina used social-patriotic and anti-oligarchic slogans, and most of all criticized the
Union of Right Forces. In October 2004, the
Socialist United Party of Russia left the Bloc's Supreme Council, accusing
Dmitry Rogozin's party of "arbitrarily renaming itself" to the Rodina party and "appropriated the right to exclusive use of the bloc's name." In response, Rogozin stated that the SEPR, which he classified as “a host of dwarf quasi-parties getting in the way,” was brought in only to ensure the legal purity of the bloc formation procedure. On 5 June 2005, Baburin's People Will party registered its own faction in the State Duma, initially consisting of nine members. Representatives of the SEPR later joined, and the faction became known as "Rodina (People's Will – SEPR)". In December 2006, the
Gennady Semigin's
Patriots of Russia party also joined the faction, after which it was renamed "People's Will – SEPR – Patriots of Russia." After supporters of the People's Will and SEPR left the faction in January 2007, it was renamed "Rodina – Patriots of Russia." In February 2007, the State Duma Committee on Rules and Organization of Work of the State Duma denied supporters of Baburin and SEPR leader Shestakov registration of their own faction. By the summer 2005, Rogozin's
Rodina party became ideologically radicalized, and was described by experts as "showing signs of National Socialist tendencies". Rogozin resigned in March 2006 and was replaced by
Alexander Babakov, who adopted a more
social democratic party rhetoric before eventually merging it into
A Just Russia in October 2006. The Rodina party was re-established in 2012 by Rogozin and
Aleksey Zhuravlyov. Three factions with the word "Rodina" in their names, Rogozin-Babakov's "Rodina", Baburin's "Rodina (People’s Will – SEPR)" and Semigin's "Rodina –
Patriots of Russia", existed during the term of the
4th State Duma. == Ideology ==